Thomas Hoover - Project Daedalus

“Confirmed. Helmet raising.”

Although his vision was still black and white, he started easing back on the throttles and checking around the cock pit. Eva was beginning to stir now, rising and struggling with her safety straps, Androv remained slumped in his G-seat.

"You okay?" He rose and moved toward her. "I think I blacked out there for a second or so."

"I'm going to make it." She shifted her eyes right. "But I'm not so sure about…"

"Don't worry." The Russian snapped conscious and immediately reached to begin loosening his straps. "I've been through heavy G-loads before." Suddenly he stared up at the screens, pointed, and yelled. "Hypersonic! Zoloto! You didn't tell me. I almost can't believe-"

"We almost lost it. Skin temperatures reached-"

"Japanese ceramic composites, my droog. No other material could have done it. And now the atmosphere is thinning. When we hit eighty thousand feet, or maybe eighty-five, skin temperature should stabilize down around a thousand degrees. That's 'room temperature' for this vehicle." He paused and grinned. "Liquid hydrogen. It's a fantastic fuel, and a terrific coolant. Of course, if this catches on and we stop using alcohol coolant in our MiGs, I don't know what the Soviet Air Force will all drink before payday."

Vance glanced at their vector. They were over the Bering Sea now, with a heading for who knew where.

Mach 11.3 and climbing. The Daedalus was pressing effortlessly toward the darkness above. Time to think about what was next.

"How much of this wonderful liquid hydrogen do we have?"

"Just enough to do what I've been planning for a long time." He edged over and touched Vance's shoulder. "I'm deeply in your debt. You made it possible. Now there's only one thing left. The ultimate!"

Vance looked at him and realized immediately what he meant. Why not!

"Do we have enough oxygen?"

"Extra cannisters were loaded because of the two Mino Industries pilots. I think we have about ten hours."

"Then I vote we give it a shot," he said, turning to Eva. "What do you think?"

"What are you talking about?"

He flipped up his helmet visor. "If we can achieve Mach 25 by around a hundred thousand feet, we can literally insert into orbit. It'd cause a diplomatic flap the size of World War Three."

She slumped back in her G-seat. "Is it really possible?"

"Of course," Androv said. Then he laughed. "Well, I hope so. I've been thinking about it for a couple of months now. I actually programmed Petra to compute the precise thrust required, orbital apogee and perigee, everything. The first Sputnik had an apogee of one hundred miles and a perogee of one hundred twenty-five miles. I've calculated that at Mach 25 I could propel this vehicle into roughly that orbit. To get out we can just do a de-orbit burn. Set the compressors on the ramjets for retrofire and cold-start them."

"So we can hold Tanzan Mino's cojones hostage for a while and have some fun," Vance smiled. "What do we tell Petra?"

"I'll give her the coordinates, but you've got to handle the stick. We need to hit Mach 25 above 98,600 feet, then shut down the engines with split-second timing. She'll tell you when. If I computed it right, we should just coast over the top."

"Got it." He looked up at the screens on the front wall of the cockpit. Their altitude was now 87,000 feet, and then-speed had reached Mach 18, over ten thousand miles per hour. They were cracking world records every millisecond. And the cockpit was starting to cool off again as the thinner atmosphere reduced friction on the leading edges. They'd survived the thermal barrier. Coming up was the emptiness of space.

He watched as Androv called the routine in Petra's silicon memory where he had stored the orbital data, then ordered her to coordinate it with their current acceleration, altitude, and attitude.

Confirmed, she was saying. Reducing alpha by two degrees. She'd already begun modifying their flight profile.

“You are approximately four minutes and thirty-seven seconds from the calculated orbit. Will fuel controls be manual or automatic?”

Vance glanced over at Androv. Here at the edge of space, were they really going to turn their destiny over to a talking computer? This game could turn serious if Petra somehow screwed up.

"Let's keep the throttles on manual."

"I agree," he nodded. "Too much could go wrong."

"If we don't like the looks of anything, we can always abort."

"Petra," Androv commanded, "throttles will be manual."

Affirmative. If she felt slighted, she wasn't saying anything. Four minutes.

"We'd all better strap in," Vance said, "till we see how this goes."

The screens above them were still flashing flight data. The strut temperature in the scramjets, where a supersonic shock wave was providing the compression to combust hydrogen and the rush of thin air, had stabilized at 3,100 degrees Fahrenheit. Androv stood staring at the screens, and a moistness entered his eyes.

"If my father could have seen this," he finally said in Russian. "Everything he designed has worked perfectly. He dreamed of this vehicle, talked of it for so many years, and now finally… to be murdered on his day of triumph."

Eva looked at him. "Maybe his real dream was for you to fly it. To create something for you."

He paused, as though uncertain how to respond. The look in his eyes said he knew it was true. The pain and anger seemed to flow through him like electricity.

"Before we are finished, the world will know of his achievement. I intend to make sure of it."

“Three minutes,” Petra announced. “Reducing alpha by three degrees.”

The screen above reported that they'd reached Mach 22.4. Their altitude was now ninety-three thousand feet.

She's leveling out, Vance thought. Are we going to make it, or just fade in the stretch?

The scramjets were punching through the isolation of near-space now, the underfuselage scooping in the last fringes of atmosphere. He doubted if there'd be enough oxygen above a hundred thousand feet to enable the engines to continue functioning, but if they could capture the vehicle's design speed, seventeen thousand miles per hour, they still could coast into the perigee curve of a huge orbital elipse.

He looked at the screens again. They were now at Mach 23.7, with two and a half minutes left. The complex calculus being projected on Petra's main display now showed their rate of acceleration was diminishing rapidly as the atmosphere continued to thin. Maybe, he thought, there's a good reason why no one has ever inserted an air-breathing vehicle into orbit before. Maybe all the aerodynamic and propulsion tricks in the world can't compensate for the fact that turbines need to breathe.

Petra seemed to sense they were in trouble. “Constricting venturi by seven point three,” she said. “Reducing alpha by four degrees.”

She was choking down the scramjets and leveling them out even more. Their thrust to weight ratio-which at thirty thousand feet had been greater than one, meaning they could actually fly straight up-was dropping like a stone. It was now down to 0.2. Daedalus was slowly smothering.

But now their velocity had reached Mach 24.6. Almost, almost…

“Thirty seconds,” Petra said, as though trying to sound confident. She was busy sampling the combustion ratio in the scramjets and making micro adjustments to the hydrogen feed.

Androv spoke into his helmet mike. "I'm beginning to think we won't make it. Petra is now probably estimating thrust based on faulty assumptions about oxygen intake. There's nothing left up here to burn. There'll be no need to abort. The edge of the atmosphere is going to do it for us." He looked up at the big screen and said, "Petra, project image from the nose camera, rotated to minus ninety."